


Six times Joe Gibken had a personality (and one time he gave up)

by oneatatime



Category: Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger
Genre: Alternate Universes, Gen, Multi, any excuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 13:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7977991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneatatime/pseuds/oneatatime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe's having a long week.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six times Joe Gibken had a personality (and one time he gave up)

On Monday (Earth calendars could be quite useful sometimes, and Gai cried any time anyone made the slightest joke about taking down his Red Falcon tribute calendar in the galley), Joe came out of his cabin to the sounds of swearing. He sighed. He stopped in front of the large shimmery blob that a section of the floor had turned into, and bellowed, “Hakase!” 

Don stopped swearing and popped his head around the doorway at the other end of the corridor. His hair stood up in all directions, he had a grease smudge across one cheek, and for some reason he was wearing a little brown wrap thing around his head. With two little ears sticking up through holes in the top. “J-Joe! You have two legs!” 

... 

Joe folded his arms. “What. Is. Going. On,” he inserted in between portions of Hakase-babble, which he was now far better at reading than he’d been to begin with. There were various flavours, such as the one about how everyone’s about to die, the one about well no one’s technically going to die if you lot leave your dishes like THIS but I will get really really cross anyway, and the one that was don’t tell me you left half a pound of chocolate in your coat pockets again I’ll be three hours cleaning the washing machine just let me do all your stupid laundry. This particular flavour of Hakase-babble meant that no one was actually in mortal peril, but there was a distinct possibility that the universe was about to implode or some shit. 

The babble, which was occurring simultaneously, ran something like: “I mean, you usually have two legs! But so much has changed! And there’s a man here who’s all shimmery and see through and stuff and he gave Marvelous a light saber and I don’t think Marvelous should have light sabers and there’s a tall hairy guy who keeps asking moanfully for Solo! We’re going through a section of space which is riddled with multi-parallel space-time inversions and it’s going to be a long week!” 

“...when is it not,” Joe said, resigned, feeling the headache begin to throb just behind his left eye.

A bubble of garbage disgorged two people into the corridor on Joe’s other side. He blinked, and the people rose, brushing themselves off. One in a white shirt and dirty black vest over the top, the other in delicate pink, with her hair in two whorls on the sides of her head. 

“Listen, princess,” Luka said dangerously, but then she looked at Ahim and her face softened. She reached out and flicked a banana peel off Ahim’s shoulder. Grumpily, she continued. “Suppose I’m glad you’re okay.” 

Ahim drew herself up to her full not terribly impressive height (but somehow, with Ahim, that always seemed about three feet taller when she was in this mood). She glared up at Luka. “If you had not endangered us in the first place, laser brain-san – “

Except her glare turned into more of a smile, as well. It was ridiculous. Really. Were they going to have to learn THESE tropes now? Sentai tropes were bad enough. 

Joe felt himself twitch. He looked down to realise gold metal was creeping up his body. Didn’t hurt or anything. He glared over at Don as it rippled up to his neck, and then covered his face. Felt like his helmet. Not great, not bad, just a thing. 

A little droid trundled along the corridor blooping and bleeping in what he knew, just KNEW was spluttering about how super sentai never did this. “Come on, Gai,” he said to the little droid, and got the hell out of there before the heroic music started playing and Luka and Ahim kissed or whatever. He was happy for ‘em, he really was, but that didn’t mean he wanted to see goopy shit. Besides, presumably someone had to stop Marvelous from carving up the place with whatever the hell a light saber was. 

* * * *

On Tuesday, they were at dinner when the food shimmered and suddenly became gelatinous cubes. Joe continued eating, for lack of anything better to do. Tasted weird, but food was food. 

There was a simultaneous hushed gasp of “My _food._ ” Marvelous looked about ready to burst into tears. Don was no better. Luka pushed her plate away from herself. 

“Is it not what you are used to?” Ahim asked anxiously, except she wasn’t quite Ahim any more and that wasn’t really her normal accent. Joe’s eyes went up to look at her, and then his eyebrows went up, too. Her hair was white, skin darker. Looked pretty. Looked pretty her usual way, too, of course. 

Ting.

“No, princess, but we’ll get used to it,” Marvelous said gallantly. He turned up his nose at his black t-shirt, but made a valiant effort to eat a bite of the wobbly stuff on his plate. 

Joe chewed, and swallowed.

Ting. 

Ting ting.

“Quit that,” he advised Gai, who was poking absently at Joe’s arm. 

“Joe-saaaaaaan,” Gai wailed. “Why are there LIONS waving at us through the windows!!!!!” 

* * * * 

Wednesday........ Wednesday was very confusing. 

Between Don yelling about the laws of physics, and Marvelous being attacked every minute or so by a new bizarre alien who shimmered into existence, punched him, got punched a few times, then shimmered out again (Marvelous was having a BLAST, but his shirt got ripped a bit more every time), and Ahim’s sudden inability to pronounce the letter ‘v’, Joe just put the hell up with the pointed ears. At least he was still in blue. Helped, a bit.

* * * * 

On Thursday things got a littlie more serious.

Joe found himself with a long coat and a sword, which was not a bad thing in the normal course of events. Wasn’t a Gokai Saber, but it was a _beautiful_ sword. Solid, but well balanced, feeling like it sang its way through the air. 

Luka stood up from the couch, pointing along the corridor. “There’s a Horror in the bathroom,” she said urgently, and suddenly she had a sword in her hand, too.

“Oi, I don’t think that’s fair,” Don responded, “I mean, Gai takes a little longer to get ready in the mornings sometimes than the rest of us do, but he still looks nice even when he’s just woke up, I mean come on, Luka!” 

She grabbed his head and turned it, and Don’s mouth dropped open. He produced a glowing brush from nowhere (Joe really wanted to believe it was nowhere). 

What was a Horror, exactly, Joe wondered, but he had some vague knowledge in the back of his mind that it was something he had to fight. Well. He knew how to fight. He swished his coat tails, then did it again, ‘cos it looked cool. 

A black thing flung itself at Don and Luka, who went down before Joe could even get there. There was another one spidering his way, a black crawling thing which snarled in his face, and he – 

It disappeared into a disgusting black puddle, revealing Gai, who looked mighty confused and seemed to’ve gone blond. “Horrors,” he murmured. 

* * * *

On Friday? 

Friday was _bumpy._

Marvelous rubbed absently at the place on his forehead where the two horns had emerged. Luka snored in a corner – Joe’d heard her snore before, but generally she was a lot louder than this. Don fussed around all of them, putting down snacks for everyone, finding a blanket for Luka, more crayons for Gai who was on his stomach drawing, legs in the air, feet kicking idly as he drew a big sun in the air. A man sat in the far corner, eating a mountain of rice. 

Marvelous said something, and Joe found himself snarking back. He didn’t even know what he was snarking about, was the dumb thing. But Marvelous was clearly the dumb one, even though Joe loved him dearly, and then – 

“Stop it,” came a quiet voice from behind them all. 

“Ahim!” they chorused. 

She managed a smile, but she was clearly tense. Ahim had a belt around her waist. “Let’s go, Marvelous-san,” she said, swiping some kind of card through the belt. Marvelous crowed, flicked Joe in the forehead hard enough to make him stagger, then disappeared as a suit with huge red eyes formed around Ahim.

* * * * 

“Why do I get the robot arm again?” Joe demanded of Don on Saturday.

“I don’t know, I don’t knowwww,” Don ruffled his hair at super speed, making it stand up even more ridiculously. “We were doing things aligned with our personalities before, but the universes are getting more and more weird and I don’t know!!!!”

Marvelous... strutted, was the only word for it. “Oi, shut up. I like this suit!” Metal, red and gold and cranky-looking, and it let him fly. Of course he did.

“Joe?” Gai asked Joe, looking very small and miserable in his blue and red. The cropped hair suited him, though. 

“Yes,” Joe said patiently. 

“Joe?” 

“Yes,” Joe said, not so patiently. 

“You remember me?”

Joe turned and let his forehead thump into the wall, just as Ahim’s giant green face thwacked into the window from outside. Luka, some kind of clearly implausible space suit on over her catsuit, methodically worked her way towards Ahim yet again. 

Ting.

Ting ting. 

“Quit that.” 

* * * *

On Sunday?

On Sunday, when Joe pushed open the door into the main cabin, and saw frog-Don trying to keep order up on stage with some kind of spectral hand up his ass, with Gai, hand up his ass too, ready to do some kind of rocket-propelled act with a bunch of chickens, with Luka and Ahim wearing a labcoat and saying mee mee mee respectively, with Marvelous and Basco sitting in the audience and chortling rude comments about everything....

On Sunday, Joe said, “Hell with this,” and went back to bed.


End file.
